The 25 Worst Sex Scenes in Movie History

Our list of the 25 best movie sex scenes was a celebratory look at some of contemporary cinema’s steamiest moments. It was, despite the somber tone of a few films, what you might call a feel-good ranking. There is nothing to feel good about in our latest inventory of sex scenes, all of which are entirely un-sexy. Awkward. Gross. Uncomfortable. Disturbing. Horrific. Any and all of these adjectives can be found in our list of the 25 worst sex scenes in movie history. It goes without saying that things are about to get a little NSFW (and maybe not safe for life).

We each selected our top 25 picks for the worst movie sex scenes from a lengthy shortlist with titles ranging from Avatar to Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and everything in between. After making our initial selections, the list was narrowed down and individually ranked from the absoluteworst to the least offensive. There are some pretty interesting surprises (and rather surprising rankings) on this list, which really highlights the diversity of opinions among our staff.

Without further ado, our list of the 25 worst sex scenes in movie history. Enjoy?

25. Ted (2012)Directed by Seth MacFarlane

Seth MacFarlane’s man-child comic fantasy raises a lot of questions about the reproductive anatomy of its central animated teddy bear that the film’s not prepared to answer, but this isn’t the forum to resolve them. (That’s what Twitter is for.) Let us instead squirm in discomfort as the incorrigibly horny stuffed animal pantomimes increasingly graphic sex acts on a supermarket register for the amusement of his comely co-cashier. What starts as good-natured if a bit randy — a little dry-hump here, some simulated fellatio there — slams into the wall of polite taste, along with certain bodily fluids. There’s a symbol for the cinema of Seth MacFarlane buried in here somewhere. – Charles Bramesco

24. My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)Directed by Ivan Reitman

In the ageless philosophical treatise Mallrats, Jason Lee theorizes that Superman’s sperm would be too powerful for the womb of an ordinary mortal, and that his only viable sexual partner would be someone like Wonder Woman, with her ostensibly indestructible birth canal. In this limp rom-com (the title’s also the elevator pitch), Luke Wilson plays out this hypothetical scenario with Uma Thurman, who portrays a jilted crimefighter monikered G-Girl. The film wants to blow our minds with the intensity of this super-powered, bed-destroying rut sesh, but the actors can’t back up the game their characters are talking. From the all-lights-on/fully-under-the-covers blandness to the unenthusiastic dialogue, it’s a far cry from Spidey’s rain-soaked kiss with Mary Jane. – CB

23. Shoot ’Em Up (2007)Directed by Michael Davis

I’ll admit I have never seen the cinematic classic Shoot ‘Em Up, but I have watched the sex scene numerous times and I’m fairly convinced it isn’t real. No, it must be an excerpt from an action movie porn parody. There’s simply no way an actual, legitimate film studio would fund this, right? In case you’re unfamiliar: In the middle of a heated bit of love-making, a gang of masked assassins burst into Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci’s motel room. Owen’s gun-toting drifter does what any reasonable person would do: Grabs his weapon and shoots at the bad guys while somehow still pleasuring his partner. Most baffling of all isn’t even the fact that neither of them get hit or that there’s a crying baby in the room amid the entire coitus shoot-out; it’s that, miraculously, Bellucci manages to have multiple orgasms as Owen rolls and tumbles across the room. It’s truly one of the most bananas sex scenes in movie history. – Oliver Whitney

22. Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)Directed by Kevin Smith

I’m an idealist, at least when it comes to pornography. As such, I am resentful of Kevin Smith’s sweet-hearted sex comedy for confronting me with reality. I want to believe that passion is the secret to great smut just as it is the secret to great sex, a romanticized standpoint shared by Smith’s ragtag production crew trying their hand with DIY stag flick. Imagine our shared disappointment, then, when the on-camera consummation of the title couple’s relationship makes them look like cold fish, despite the sparks privately flying between the performers. It’s an uncomfortable truth, the reason no one should position their bed near a mirror, why people are paid to do this sort of thing: All sex feels better than it looks. – CB

21. Splice (2009)Directed by Vincenzo Natali

In the great tradition of Frankensteinian horror, the most terrifying thing in Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi flick isn’t the creation, but the people who create it: Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), who play proud laboratory mama and papa to a genetically-modified (and slightly human-ish) creature named Dren. The trouble starts where it does for most parents: Puberty. When their rapidly-growing GMO baby becomes a woman, Clive is unable to resist her primal urges and burgeoning sexual curiosity, a development made all the more unnerving by the fact that he raised her as his own child. It’s enough to make V.C. Andrews cringe, and that’s before you even get to the other scene, in which a possessive Dren rapes her adoptive science-mom. – Britt Hayes

Warner Bros.

20. Nymphomaniac (2013)Directed by Lars Von Trier

Lars Von Trier’s sexually-charged two-parter was featured on our list of the best sex scenes thanks to Charlotte Gainsbourg’s surreal three-way, but a film that explores the life of a woman burdened by her sex addiction is bound to have at least a few unpleasant moments (especially one directed by Von Trier). The most unpleasant of all occurs between a younger version of Gainsbourg’s Joe (Stacy Martin) and her husband, Jerome (Shia LaBeouf), who finds himself no longer able to cope with his wife’s relentless — and increasingly dangerous — sexual impulses. When Joe says “Fill all my holes,” it sounds more like a death wish than pillow talk. – BH

It should be a punishable offense to put two people as beautiful as Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in a sex scene as unsexy as this. Watching this is about as hot as watching two raw chicken breasts slap up against each other; and not even Feist can salvage it. You’re telling me that Bella and Edward, the king and queen of YA romance fiction, spend four whole movies together and when they finally get to bone, there’s zero heat and chemistry between the two? And these two dated? Sorry Condon, but you can’t even blame the source material for this one. (Yes, I read the Twilight books.) The honeymoon sex is only alluded to after the fact, and with details (bruises, a damaged headboard, ripped pillows, etc.) suggesting it was super fiery. Gimme R-rated vampire copulation, not this soppy soap opera mess. – OW

18. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989)Directed by Jim Wynorski

No, this isn’t a very special episode of Melrose Place; it is a very questionable sequel to Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing, which was a fairly straightforward adaptation of the DC horror comics. The sequel, as evidenced by this baffling sequence, is more tongue-in-cheek, with everyone’s favorite muck monster romancing everyone’s favorite Heather Locklear. Poor old Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) is a little uncertain about their coupling and warns Locklear’s Abby that he’s not just a dude in a costume; he’s an actual plant. “That’s okay!” she cheerfully replies. “I’m a vegetarian!” Clearly unsure whether Abby is aroused or hungry, Swamp Thing produces some kind of in-no-way-phallic fruit from his undercarriage; eating it seems to induce a shared hallucination where Swamp Thing reverts to human form for some softly-lit boom-boom in the bayou. All in all it is a very bizarre scene and for some reason it makes me want to eat gazpacho every time I watch it. – Matt Singer

17. Sausage Party (2016)Directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon

The last thing I want to see anthropomorphic foods do is f—. Sorry, it’s not clever, it’s not funny, and it makes me never want to eat a hot dog again. Just because a bagel has a hole and a sausage is phallic doesn’t mean one should go inside the other. It’s like laughing at farts — the first couple times are funny, then the joke quickly wears off and turns childish. One silly sex scene could’ve been fine in Sausage Party, but a three-minute orgy where Michael Cera’s deformed sausage moans “I’m blowing my f—ing load”? That’s the type of dumb idea that’s best kept in the basement between bong hits with your buds. – OW

16. 300: Rise of an Empire (2014)Directed by Noam Murro

Make no mistake, the shot in which a bare-breasted Eva Green brandishes a longsword against the unguarded throat of the man who was inside her only moments earlier is the best in this otherwise execrable film. Even so, the violent tryst between her Persian ruler and a prospective recruit for her military is too ridiculous to be sexy and too into its own soft-kinkery to be truly amusing. Hair-pulling, choking, slapping, power-play, the whole Rough Sex 101 playbook gets a workout in a thoroughly dumb (if athletic, and committed) ancient Grecian boot-knock. Or, rather, sandal-knock. – CB

15. Jack Frost (1997)Directed by Michael Cooney

At a certain point, you’ve gotta ask yourself who the real villain is: The sentient snowman on a sadistic killing spree, or the writers who brought him into being? This scene is that point, where Frosty’s evil cousin dissolves himself into a bath so that a telegenic coed can scrub up ... inside of him? Like so many of the scenes on this list, the physical logistics don’t quite add up, but it’s hard to focus on anything else when Jack Frost turns solid once again and the connotative rape becomes frightfully literal. It’s the kind of distasteful (and not in the fun horror way) business one hopes you can’t get away with anymore. – CB

A-Pix Entertainment

14. Gigli (2003)Directed by Martin Brest

At the risk of being controversial, I would suggest that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are amongst the most physically attractive people of the last 25 years. And yet you would be hard-pressed to find a less erotic conversation in the history of cinema than this perverse form of verbal seduction between Lopez and Affleck in their notorious disasterpiece Gigli. Lopez and Affleck were a real-life couple at the time; according to urban legend, rampant public curiosity about their relationship inspired the studio to force director Martin Brest to cut nearly 40 minutes from the film and turn a dark crime flick to a putrid romantic comedy. That includes this scene, where Jennifer Lopez’s Ricki praises the beauty of the female form (her character is a lesbian) while insulting the male anatomy (which she claims looks like a sea slug), all while doing yoga. Later, despite her sexual orientation, she agrees to sleep with Affleck’s Larry Gigli, beckoning him onward with the come-hither line: “It’s turkey time…gobble, gobble.” If Bennifer’s home life was anything like this, it’s not shocking they broke up just a few months after the film’s release. At least they’ll always have turkey time. Here’s looking at you, Gigli. – MS

13. Bad Teacher (2011)Directed by Jake Kasdan

Picking up where his close personal friend Andy Samberg left off with “Jizz in My Pants,” Justin Timberlake takes charge in this hideously unsexy dry-hump-a-palooza with Cameron Diaz. Don’t worry about why they’re going to town on one another while fully clothed — it has to do with a scheme to get at Timberlake’s money, but to say any more would risk compelling readers to actually watch the accurately named Bad Teacher — just marvel at the profound uncoolness that Timberlake, the coolest man on Earth, has achieved in this mortifying sexual spectacle. That, students, is what we in the business of show call “range.” – CB

12. The Counselor (2013)Directed by Ridley Scott

There’s been a bit of a debate amongst the ScreenCrush team over the scene where Cameron Diaz orgasms on the windshield of a Ferrari — is it actually bad? Is it so bad that it’s maybe great? I am here to set the record straight, once and for all: The Counselor car sex scene is just plain bad. It’s an absurd moment that arrives out of nowhere in the middle of the Cormac McCarthy-penned film. Javier Bardem’s epic dumbfounded reaction and play-by-play narration is hilarious, but for Diaz the scene is just embarrassing. One could try to make the case that her spread-eagling atop of a car is a statement of female empowerment; the image of a woman getting off without a man via a man’s toy. But randomly inserted into the plot, the scene is just an anecdote shared between two men bonding over their bafflement of the vagina — it’s less about her pleasure and more about a horny dude’s amazement. – OW

11. Observe and Report (2009)Directed by Jody Hill

Next to Nathan Fielder, filmmaker Jody Hill is the king of painfully human cringe comedy, and Observe and Report is his darkest, most demented piece of work to date. Seth Rogen’s Ronnie is a bipolar mall security guard with dreams (delusions, really) of becoming a real cop and dating Brandi, the beautiful woman who works at a makeup counter (Anna Faris). When she finally agrees, Brandi spends the night getting wasted and helping herself to Ronnie’s meds, resulting in what looks — for an uncomfortably long amount of time — like he’s assaulting an unconscious woman ... until she suddenly shouts at him to keep going. It’s a hilariously deranged moment. – BH

Warner Bros.

10. Last Tango in Paris (1973)Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Pauline Kael called it a “breakthrough” and “the most powerfully erotic movie ever made” in 1972. But the years have not been kind to Last Tango in Paris, particularly after one of its stars, Maria Schneider, revealed that the movie’s controversial “butter scene” — in which her character is raped by Marlon Brando’s Paul, using a stick of butter as lubricant — was not in the original script, and that agreeing to work with its director, Bernardo Bertolucci, was one of her life’s only regrets. (Bertolucci later claimed the scene was in the script, but not the butter, which he said Brando improvised on the day of the shoot.) Even if Schneider had no issues with this scene, it could still make our list, thanks to the grotesque sight of Brando delivering his rambling mid-coitus speech about “good citizens” and freedom “assassinated by egotism.” Last Tango surely was a landmark in cinema. But not all landmarks are entirely positive or beneficial. – MS

United Artists

9. Howard the Duck (1986)Directed by Willard Huyck

Let us state at the outset that Marvel Comics’ Howard the Duck has had a longtime human girlfriend, so there is a kind of precedent for what director Willard Huyck put to film in his version of the material. However, it is one thing to see something illustrated in cartoon form on a page, and quite another to see it acted out in surprisingly elaborate detail by a living, breathing woman (a startlingly game Lea Thompson) and a man in a duck costume. Mercifully, things shift to silhouette view before any actual intercourse takes place, but we’re still subjected to the legitimately icky sight of Thompson stroking Howard’s chest, which causes all the feathers on his head to suddenly rise to attention. That image should be printed, laminated, and dispensed to college kids as a foolproof form of inexpensive birth control. – MS

8. The Matrix Reloaded (2003)Directed by the Wachowskis

After all the talk of Zion, the last bastion of human civilization, in The Matrix, we finally get there in The Matrix Reloaded and it’s…a big rave cave? And after all the sexual tension between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), they finally hook up and it’s ... generic slo-mo grinding (with constant cutaways to the rave cave) for five minutes? The Neo/Trinity sex scene in The Matrix Reloaded is the Matrix sequels in a nutshell: Boring, slow, repetitive, and a huge disappointment. I remember this scene distinctly as the moment I realized, sitting in the theater at the AMC Lincoln Square in Manhattan, that the sequels were never going to live up to the originals. Is it bad that every time this scene comes on I root for the machines to show up and wipe out Zion? Because I do. – MS

7. Antichrist (2009)Directed by Lars Von Trier

Lars Von Trier is the only director who could make two films with multiple sex scenes that qualify for both our best and worst lists. The devastating opening sequence of Antichrist made our best-of ranking, but it’s thescenes later in the film that earned it a spot on this list. Guilt-ridden over the death of her child, a woman’s (Charlotte Gainsbourg, again) self-loathing becomes a morbid interrogation of her own gender and nature’s inherent evil — culminating in a horrific sequence wherein she mounts her psychoanalyst husband (Willem Dafoe), attacks his genitals, and masturbates him to a bloody climax. Later (yes, there’s more), she engages in a furious session of self-pleasure before mutilating her own genitals with a pair of scissors. It’s a perfect, terrifying encapsulation of the film’s thematic progression. It’s also completely f—ed up. – BH

6. Irreversible (2002)Directed by Gaspar Noe

There are a few scenes I literally never want to watch again in my life. Three are on this list, including this one, the infamous nine-minute rape scene from Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible. In it, Monica Bellucci’s character is assaulted by a pimp in a subway underpass, then brutally beaten unconscious — all shot in a single take with a stationary camera. One could say Noé succeeds at evoking the utter horror of sexual assault with the controversial scene, and sure, it left me more disturbed and sick to my stomach than most films. That’s often Noé’s aim, especially with sexuality — remember the Enter the Void sex scene where the disembodied protagonist travels inside his sister’s vagina? But Noé’s rape scene is grossly gratuitous and exploits very real violence against women for no reason other than shock value and a technical gimmick. I’ll admit I do admire bits of the Argentinian filmmaker’s brash, insolent style, and the uniqueness of Irreversible’s backwards narrative and camera tricks, but the film sickeningly revels in its depiction of rape and fails to make the case for why such an excessive approach is necessary. – OW

Lionsgate

5. Requiem for a Dream (2000)Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Aronofsky’s sweaty odyssey through the perils of addiction is filled with plenty of horrific and unforgettable imagery, including — but not limited to — Jared Leto’s grotesque heroin-induced abscess and Ellen Burstyn’s hallucination of a possessed refrigerator. It’s the most effective D.A.R.E. campaign of all time. But if that didn’t convince you to Just Say No, Aronofsky seals the deal with the film’s most repulsive and devastating moment: Jennifer Connelly’s Marion, desperate for a fix, finds herself in the employ of a pimp who lures her to a party for some of his VIPs by dangling a big ol’ bag of heroin in front of her face. When Marion arrives, she’s paired with another woman to put on a painful, nightmarish “performance.” That traumatic scene is dizzyingly intercut with almost equally disturbing climaxes for the other three leads, but nothing is more upsetting than what happens after the party stops and Clint Mansell’s iconic score begins. – BH

4. Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson

It takes some real skill to make a movie with so much sex, nudity, spanking, and sensual teasing such a turnoff. There isn’t just one bad scene in Fifty Shades of Grey; every instance of eroticism in its two-hour runtime is comically bad and shockingly vanilla, from the Red Room whipping to the bedroom thrusting. The biggest problem is the total lack of chemistry between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan; whatever the opposite of steamy is, they’re it. But unsexy sex isn’t the only knock against the first E.L. James adaptation (the sex scenes in the sequel are a bit of a step up, for what it’s worth). Worst of all, Fifty Shades presents awildly unethical and dangerous understanding of BDSM. The film misunderstands dominant-submissive relationships, makes a parody out of communication and boundary-setting (key in kink partnerships), and romanticizes a relationship where consent and safety are threatened by emotional abuse and manipulation. Though it’s more of a reflection of James’ novels than the film itself, the most egregious thing about Fifty Shades of Grey is how it ultimately exploits the kink scene to get audiences hot and bothered, then condemns BDSM as something dirty and depraved. – OW

3. Avatar (2009)Directed by James Cameron

When the ScreenCrush staff first began discussing which films would appear on this list, I was struck by the inclusion of one selection in particular and sent the following email: “There was a sex scene in Avatar?!” The overall forgettability of James Cameron’s world-straddling blockbuster has become a running joke all its own, but the romantic interlude of this Fern Gully remake is especially memory-proof. In part because it lasts all of two minutes, but moreso because these aliens bang by braiding their hairs. This is not the future we were promised. Alien sex was going to be awesome in ways we could scarcely conceptualize; extraterrestrials would get it poppin’ in different dimensions using body parts we’d have to invent, accessing sensations the likes of which our puny human brains can’t even conceive. And so we’re supposed to believe that the most erotic experience known to these nine-foot-tall azure-skinned cat-people is getting their hair did? They wear loincloths, so they’re obviously obscuring some manner of genitalia between their legs — is that immaterial to the Na’vi physiognomy of arousal? If so, then why bother covering it at all? These are the brave questions that a scant few critics had the courage to ask upon the film’s original release in 2009. – CB

2. The Room (2003)Directed by Tommy Wiseau

Imagine having the unchecked and unearned ego to write and direct a movie when you have absolutely no idea how to write or direct a movie. Imagine casting yourself as the lead in this movie, even though you can’t act. Imagine being so in love with your own physique, and so eager to showcase your lovemaking techniques before the whole world, that you not only insert a lengthy and graphic sex scene, you actually recycle outtakes from that lengthy and graphic sex scene and turn it into a second sex scene in the same movie. And then imagine, after all of that, that in the sex scene you appear to be thrusting your junk into your partner’s belly button instead of her genitals. This is what Tommy Wiseau did in The Room. Either he does not understand the finer points of the female anatomy, or I need to have a long conversation with my wife. (NOTE: The Room is currently only available on YouTube in censored form. So trust us. He totally has sex with this poor woman’s belly button.) – MS

1. Watchmen (2009)Directed by Zack Snyder

There were a few points of contention on this list, but we all agreed that one cinematic sex scene was the absolute worst of the worst. Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s beloved graphic novel proved fairly divisive upon release, but even those who enjoy Watchmen (like me) can’t argue with the fact that it features a horrendous moment of lovemaking so tone-deaf you might wonder if this movie was really made by a teenage boy who obnoxiously boasts about his sexual prowess, though in actuality he’s a virgin. After breaking up with her atomic genius boyfriend, Sally, aka Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) begins a relationship with fellow former superhero Daniel, aka Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), and the two decide to come out of retirement. A night of old-fashioned crime-fighting gets them all hot and bothered, and ...cue Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as they sensually remove their rubber costumes. It’s certainly the best version of the song, but it’s far from the sexiest. Cohen has other tracks far more suitable for boning (see: Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz), and his ironic anthem intentionally eschews the kind of nostalgic sentiment that compels Wilson and Akerman to do the deed on his Owl Ship. The combination of Cohen’s dry, dispassionate verses and Snyder’s awkwardly choreographed superhero sex — accompanied by a laughably symbolic deployment of the ship’s thrusters and comically exaggerated O-faces — is jarring, to say the very, very least. – BH